Recording Industry Helps Rapper/Single Mom Get A PhD, Though It Tried To Weasel Out

from the see,-sometimes-they-do-some-good dept

Michael sends in this excellent story of a major record label actually doing right by one of its (former) artists... though, the story really doesn't reflect that well on Warner Music. It's the story of Roxanne Shante, one of the first female hip hop stars, who came out with a hit song in the 80s (when she was 14-years-old), leading the way for other female rappers. Of course, like so many other artists, she found out that the big record labels weren't so great after all. After two albums, when she realized that her label was basically stealing from her, she called it quits from music. At age 19, however, she remembered that Warner Music has put a clause in her contract, promising to "fund her education for life." She figures they put that in as a "throwaway, never believing a teen mom in public housing would attend college." But, attend college, she did. She didn't just get a bachelor's degree, but went all the way through to a PhD. in psychology.

Of course, Warner Music, already having done plenty to try to cheat her out of her contract, worked hard not to pay. But the dean at, Marymount Manhattan College, where she attended for some of both her undergraduate and graduate degrees, read over the clause and simply kept sending bills to Warner Music. Warner (so nice of them, as per usual) ignored the invoices until Shante threatened to go public with the story of Warner Music Group not living up to their contract promises on something so basic as funding her education. In the end, Warner Music had to pay up around $217,000 for Shante's education, and she's put the doctorate to good use, launching a therapy practice focused on urban African-Americans, experimenting with new ways to get them over the taboo associated with therapy. It's nice to see how Warner Music actually did some good in the world, even if it had to be dragged there kicking and screaming.

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In the movie she'll be a poor, near-dead crackhead, saved from a life of squalor by a Warner Guardian Angel (TM). They will change her PhD field to "hip-hop dance" to give it more broad urban appeal, and will end with her winning a Nobel Peace Prize and dedicating it to Warner, during a speech in which she fears that today's disadvantaged young artists won't get the chances she did, since pirates are forcing Warner to stop helping them out.

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Climax scene: a dance-off wherein she gets a sprained ankle via an underhanded trip from Michael Geist or William Patry. Then, she rises above the pain, "crumping" the hell out of the ACLU dancer on her gimp leg while the Dean of Marymount Manhattan College lies unconscious in his hospital bed convalescing from an epic battle with cancer. She goes to visit her dean, limps in just as he comes-to, and they both hug realizing that they beat the odds.

Ahh...how I miss the dayz of old...for the record, her song as well as the song she was responding to (UTFO, anybody?) were introduced to me on a radio shack cassette tape...woot woot...in early 1985...when I was about Roxanne's age..hehe

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With the exception of skydiving, you can buy $100 worth of books on Amazon.com(or just use the library, or even the internet now that I think about it) and a juggling ball and teach yourself. Formal education is only important if you want to get a job, and even then only occasionally. You don't need one to be a juggler, writer, bartender, or translator if you have the knowledge.

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True, but an education (or qualifying for the diploma if you prefer) is a sort of license to work in the profession. It proves that you can at least motivate yourself to accomplish something and have a basic knowledge of the profession. Of course, most people, me included, learn most of what we use in our jobs by ourselves and from co-workers.

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Hmmm, it seems to me that self-studying something to the point of expertise shows far more motivation than just handing over a lot of money and being spoon-fed the knowledge.

I used to interview programmers for a large national corporation. From that experience I learned that given two people with equal technical know-how, the self-studied one is almost always the better choice. They tend to have a much deeper knowledge, be better when confronting unknown problems and situations, be more self-motivated and have better work habits.

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Ryan, wake up, drink a cup of Infamous Joe. The joke is that she'd be sticking Warner with the bill, so The Infamous Joe is saying he'd milk it and stay in formal education his whole life.

Saying that "real world learning" and reading books on Amazon is equally valuable misses the obvious. You know how you could tell? It was where he said "Man, I could really have some fun with that clause." Or when he replied to you, continuing the joke, and putting in a :)

Really, I'm being critical of Infamous Joe here. Dude, you need to add the [joke] tags. It must be your fault. Or you just lack the time and motivation.

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If it was a joke, I don't see how it's particularly funny though. What's the point of being subtle--on a forum, no less--if there's no payoff? But I can be funny, here's another joke:

One day this man walks out of his house to go to work. He sees this snail on his porch. So he picks it up and chucks it over his roof, into the back yard. Snail bounces off a rock, cracks its shell all to shit, and lands in the grass. Snail lies there dying. But it doesn't die. It eats some grass. Slowly heals. Grows a new shell. And after a while it can crawl again. One day the snail up and heads back to the front of the house. Finally, after a year, the little guy crawls back on the porch. Right then, the man walks out to go to work and sees this snail again. So he says to it, 'What the fuck's your problem?'

It's all about the contract

I think staying independent is what is going to work best for most artists/bands. And most aren't going to get a major label offer anyway.

But as this case illustrates, if you have the right deal, you can make the major label system work for you. That's why you can't discount all bands that sign to major labels until you know the specifics of the deals they have worked out.

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Suzanne...she was 14 or 15 when the deal was signed...WB put that clause in to appease her parents/guardians and never thought they would actually have to make good on it...and, in fact, fought against having to make good on it. This case is an example of the kinds of tricks they use to get people to sign away their interests...this time, this one time, they had to make good.

WB, at least, will never make that mistake again...I'd imagine other labels will follow suit...it's still safe to be critical of the dinosaurs :)

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The issue isn't that some contracts are good and some are bad, it's that the extremely limited competition between labels almost ensures that contracts are more likely to be in the company's favour.

In a properly competitive environment, contracts will become more and more favourable for the artists as companies compete to get them, and things will get better and better for the consumers as these labels compete to get top dollar.

The unfortunate thing is that through a convoluted mess of laws and regulations, labels are able to be completely uncompetitive, and are somehow able to maintain the status quo.

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Why do so many people keep repeating this line? It's mildly amusing, but:

1. It's not original. You clearly skipped all previous comments.
2. It's not feasible. How are you going to pay all your bills? Are you going to continue taking classes and working part time to support yourself? Are you going to work full-time and take classes at night?

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Tangent, but it's totally feasible. Many grads settle in to Universities for long tenures of study. As a phd, one can teach classes for money as one studies for subsequent degrees. One can live in graduate residences with relatively cheap rents. This is pretty common on campuses. Don't expect to be rife with extra cash, but you can life a good student lifestyle, especially in this case where the tuition is paid by Warner.

All about the contract

"When you are offered a bad contract, you don't sign it."

A nice thought. But when you realize that back then especially (and still now with the worsening education of America), people like Roxanne (and likely her parents) didn't KNOW it was a bad contract. Do you seriously expect a 14 y.o. to know anything about the spaghetti-logic laws of the music industry?

I remember her music, and some of it I enjoyed. I was much more a fan of Salt 'N Pepa however. Kudos to Roxanne for TAKING back what was owed to her from the bastards of the recording industry.

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"But when you realize that back then especially (and still now with the worsening education of America), people like Roxanne (and likely her parents) didn't KNOW it was a bad contract. Do you seriously expect a 14 y.o. to know anything about the spaghetti-logic laws of the music industry?"

I'm not sure how this relates to what I posted. I said that before you sign a contract, you get a good lawyer. And then you don't sign if you're going to get screwed.

She actually ended up with a clause that most artists aren't offered, so I don't see her contract as an example of what went wrong.

In the end, she's better off than most artists because she has a Ph.D. that someone else paid for. She'll likely be much farther ahead than had she stayed in music.

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"I'm not sure how this relates to what I posted. I said that before you sign a contract, you get a good lawyer. And then you don't sign if you're going to get screwed."

And once again, because of the state of the industry all major contracts will screw you over, and ones that don't are with minor labels.

Not to argue that it's immoral, evil, etc., but that if there was a properly competitive environment, you would be able to pick and choose contracts until you get one that's very favourable to you, because companies would be competing for talent.

It's almost inevitable that the industry will start putting more and more control in the hands of the artists, simply through the nature of the markets and progress. It would be nice if we didn't have to watch several train wrecks to get there, though.

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"And once again, because of the state of the industry all major contracts will screw you over, and ones that don't are with minor labels."

I know artists who don't feel that way. They've signed short contracts for an album or two, and they developed business plans that didn't depend on CD money anyway so it didn't matter to them if they didn't see a dime in royalties. They use the major label promotional clout to make a name for themselves and then they move on after the deal is over.

But again, it's a moot point for most artists. They won't be offered label deals in the first place.

All I have been trying to point out is that if you don't like the contract, don't sign it. And to protect yourself, get a good lawyer first. No one is forcing anyone to go the major label route. There are alternatives.

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"I know artists who don't feel that way. They've signed short contracts for an album or two, and they developed business plans that didn't depend on CD money anyway so it didn't matter to them if they didn't see a dime in royalties. They use the major label promotional clout to make a name for themselves and then they move on after the deal is over."

But that doesn't mean the contracts weren't severely unbalanced. Once again, my point isn't that artists can't make good money, because that's obviously not true. The point is that contracts would be far better if there was decent competition in the industry.

Yes, you don't have to go to a major label. But that's not the point. The point is that you wouldn't have any reason to avoid a major label in a competitive market.

Warner Music did no good.

If they fought to not have to pay for her schooling though they had a contractual agreement, they did no good. They lived up to their word after trying to break it--repeatedly. I realize that the point of the article isn't to make Warner Music look good by any means, but saying that they did any good is sort of a bastardization of the notion of "doing good."

Doing good means doing the right thing for the right reason, and they tried to do wrong but got caught. Warner Music basically "did good" to save face and most likely a hell of a lot more money than they would have by continuing to fight her.

Mark it PAID!

Jesus H. Christ! It's good to hear something like this. Not only does a rapper/hip hop artist have a world class mind and is using it but a music company 'takes a round in the ass!' Some days, life is good, very good!

Lovely story, but it's a scam.
First of all, she never went to Cornell. Check Cornell's records -- you can do it online:
http://www.cornell.edu/search/
Secondly, Ph.D programs are typically 100% funded, there would be no reason for WMG to pay for it in the first place.
Finally, she sounds absolutely ridiculous (see youtube) talking about psych, doesn't know the first thing about it.

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Lovely story, but it's a scam. First of all, she never went to Cornell. Check Cornell's records -- you can do it online: http://www.cornell.edu/search/ Secondly, Ph.D programs are typically 100% funded, there would be no reason for WMG to pay for it in the first place. Finally, she sounds absolutely ridiculous (see youtube) talking about psych, doesn't know the first thing about it.

We actually looked into this, and the Daily News report is wrong, but... not quite. She didn't get her Ph.D from Cornell. She went to Cornell Med (not the main Cornell campus) for a Masters, and then went back to Marymount for PhD.

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Publicly funded? Most college, grad and PhD candidates take out student loans if they don't have family support or an employer paying their tuition. I've never heard of anyone getting an advanced degree without paying for it - I think you are absolutely wrong.

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Tuition waivers are common among good grad schools. If you plan to actually work in academia, you probably ought not be paying for grad school (through a combination of RA/TA positions and tuition waivers).

Amazing

Mike, you are now sayin' that she went to Marymount for a Ph.d? Is that what this chronic liar is tellin' you now? Marymount is "a liberal arts university." You can look at their website and see that. "a liberal arts university" can't grant a Ph.D and if Cornell is turning out psychologists as illiterate as this woman, something's got to give.